A Male Friendly Approach To Couples Therapy

With Steven Stosny • 6 Sessions • 6 Optional CE Credits

Learn how to engage emotion-phobic men in couples therapy by reducing their shame and dread of failure, appealing to their core values, and evoking their own attachment styles.

The standard remedy for couples in trouble is “better communication.” But couples often get into a vicious cycle in which she communicates her fear of isolation, stimulating his feelings of inadequacy, which he tries to numb with aggression.

What's Covered in A708 A Male Friendly Approach To Couples Therapy:

How to break these destructive cycles.

Practical mathods based on the latest research into gender differences to end the stalemate between female criticism and defensive male withdrawal.

Get All 6 Audio Sessions NowDownload: $59 • CDs: $82

A708 A Male Friendly Approach To Couples Therapy

Session 1: Engaging Men In Therapy

Men tend to approach therapy not to have a relationship with the therapist, engage in meaningful dialogue, explore feelings, or discuss family of origin issues. Rather, they approach therapy in the same way they go to lawyers, accountants, and physicians, with specific problems for which they want specific advice. Strategies for engaging men in approaches to therapy that emphasize the above are discussed.

Session 2: Fear And Shame

An unconscious fear-shame dynamic undermines whatever couples talk about. Men who are reluctant to talk about feelings will come to life when dread of failure--as a provider, protector, lover, or parent--is put on the table. Then they can understand how the ways they cope with their dread of failure--attack or withdraw--stimulates their partner’s fear of harm, isolation, or deprivation.

Session 3: Core Value

Here we discuss how to address the core values of men about the meaning and purpose of their lives and their longing for connection, which, though often hidden beneath inflated egos, is just as strong as their wives’ longing.

Session 4: Styles of Attachments

Learn how to reconcile differences in styles of attachment that tend to make one partner frustrated and the other bewildered. Intimacy increases when both partners step out of the comfort zones of their own styles to make harmony.

Session 5: Recipes

Men tend to like recipes for what to do and how to behave. The trick for the therapist is to load recipes with content, rather than hope that the client is patient enough to find the recipes in the content. Instructors and participants share successful recipes.

Session 6: Summation

Review of course and discussion of how to apply the principles and techniques highlighted.

Meet Presenter Steven Stosny, PhD

Steven Stosny, Ph.D. is the director of Compassion Power and author of You Don't Have to Take It Anymore: How to Turn a Resentful, Angry or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One and Love Without Hurt.